During Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s seven-day visit to Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam, commencing today, there is bound to be considerable attention paid to the bolstering of economic, trade and investment ties. Japan has been closely involved with economic progress in this country over the decades — maintaining its highest
overseas development assistance (ODA) for India in those years, and has for long remained the third largest foreign investor in this country with a number of high-profile investment proposals in the pipeline. With South and Southeast Asia, Indian contacts have deepened to the satisfaction of all countries concerned since Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s initiative to foster the country’s “Look East” policy to tie up with the rapid-paced economies of that region after the end of Cold War politics. These have been reflected in India’s strong engagement with Asean economically and its outreach forums that concern themselves with issues relating to regional and international security. In the event, it will be ill-judged to view New Delhi’s ties with Tokyo, Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur principally in economic terms. Crucial as they are, the relationship in the area of market, aid, trade, and investment must be underpinned by a close understanding of and sympathy with the political matrices between us and this region of the world. After all, it was disconnect on the political side during the Cold War that made for tepid ties with Asean even as that grouping began to develop as an economic powerhouse. Contrariwise, it was India’s strong, stable and durable political relations with Vietnam — even in the phase of that country’s military struggle with first France and then Japan — that later paved the way for sturdy relations on the economic side. With Malaysia, too, ties developed in the nonaligned forum, and later strengthened under Mahathir, came good on the economic side and helped advance Indian interests in the Asean bloc.
The Prime Minister’s visit to the three leading capitals in Southeast and East Asia will help fortify and deepen synergies in a wide variety of areas. The question here is not merely one of signing agreements, but building and expanding areas of core understanding. strategic congruence, and sharing of ideas in a rapidly globalising framework in which science, economy, technology and politics arise from the same template with greater urgency and meaning than ever in the past. With its rising economic weight and assured standing among pluralistic democracies, India can only expect to move ahead if its ties with all regions of the world, and leading countries everywhere, are kept vibrant and benign. This is important from the standpoint of meeting the challenges that confront us, not least in the area of terrorism and hostile spread of nuclear arms. With the eastern end of the continent we ourselves inhabit, we have also had long-standing ties of history and culture that help in the process of slipping into the modernity discourse with them in all fields. There is likely to be speculation that the East Asia summit in Hanoi will afford the Prime Minister a chance to have an informal engagement with China’s leader, Wen Jiabao, and that this might be the centrepiece of that forum for us on this occasion. This cannot but be a misplaced reading. India’s ties with China are very important. Of late, unease has been noticed — at the public and official levels — with some aspects of this relationship which the leaders of the two countries can calmly reflect over. However, it is far-fetched to view our presence at a key regional summit in the Vietnam capital through the Chinese lens primarily.